The woman who convinced Obama to intervene in Libya

I completely understand why people are skeptical of the United States’ reasons for intervening, but Samantha Power is the real reason. She’s an internationally-recognized human rights and genocide prevention activist whose book on genocide in Bosnia won the Pulitzer Prize. And yet her role in ( Read more... )

Daniel Larison, a realist (read: smug, soulless asshat), makes the quintessential "It's not affecting us so why should we care?" argument.

There were three main points that remain central to the case against the war as far as the U.S. is concerned: 1) the U.S. has no interests at stake in Libya, and no stake in the outcome of the Libyan civil ( Read more... )

Today I have witnessed a successful peaceful revolution.

Maybe it doesn't have the same geostrategic implications, but to me this feels like the fall of the Soviet Union. No other comparison I can think of captures how this is going to change an entire field of study. Every single article on Middle Eastern politics written as recently as two months ( Read more... )

The fuck was wrong with you tonight, Jon? The random Bieber and the disjointed, pointless bagging on Olbermann were bad enough. But that interview. What the actual hell?

Maybe you didn’t mean to suggest that a US invasion of Egypt would be feasible. Maybe you just meant to ensure that the Joint Chiefs didn’t think it was. But it didn’t sound ( Read more... )